Three floors

Arnon lives, together with his obsessions, on the first floor of a three-floor apartment building just outside Tel Aviv. On the second floor is Hani, who is known as "the widow" because her husband is always away on business, and whose unhappiness appears in the form of a barn owl outside her window. On the third floor lives Dvora, a retired judge who is determined to move on with her life after the death of her husband. Three different protagonists, each with their own tale of solitude and their own personal relationships, and each with a different way of telling them: Arnon, on the edge of the abyss, unburdens himself on a writer friend at a bar. Hani writes a letter to a friend she hasn't seen for ages. Dvora records her stories on the answering machine, imaginarily talking to her late husband, because "The three floors of the soul don't exist within us. They exist in the space between us and others, in the distance between our mouth and the ear of those who listen to our story. And if no one is listening, then there isn't even a story." The three floors of the soul are those of the three instances of Freudian theory, with the three protagonists each representing one aspect: the id, the ego, and the superego. Three tales of humanity, of guilt and desire, of unspoken secrets, regrets and will-power, written with rare intensity and elegance by Eshkol Nevo. Tre piani Eshkol Nevo, Neri Pozza, 2017